


Better Than You Know Yourself

by Zaffie



Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: But She Gets Kinda Bitchy When She's Sad, F/M, Hard to explain, I Don't Really Know Guys, I Lied And There Are No Lollipops, I'm tired, It's Not As Much Fun As It Should Be, It's Super Late, Lollipops?, Plus Like, Reade Perserveres, So Reade Is Trying To Comfort Zapata, Some Vague Injuries, Soup Bonding, This Is Mediocre, can't tag, general weirdness, such emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-19 16:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9449966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: Being partners means knowing what to say in the worst of times. Or how to throw a washcloth at somebody with as much affection as possible.A two-shot, pretty much, wherein Reade and Zapata pick themselves up after tough cases and bond adorably while doing it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are seriously no fics for this pairing. I can think of, like, three. Or something. If anyone knows of any, pls link me. Link me now. I'll love and appreciate you.
> 
> Anyway, I've shipped Reade/Zapata pretty steadily since the first episode of the series. They've got the best kind of emotional connection plus a healthy and super strong friendship/partnership, which is one of my favourite relationship foundations. Not sure where all the other Reade/Zapata shippers are at, but I hope some of them find this.

Reade steps into the locker rooms and Tasha is just sitting there, on a bench, elbows on her knees and head in her hands. There’s still blood all over her. It’s on her clothes, caked into her hair and drying slowly on her face.

     “Gross,” Reade says, settling onto the bench beside her. “You didn’t shower?”

     She doesn’t answer him; doesn’t even glare at him, which is how he knows she’s really feeling bad. He sits, and waits. Tasha’s not the sharing type. Her feelings spill out of her when she’s ready and not before.

     Sure enough, after a few minutes she says, “I fucked up.”

     “You didn’t.”

     Tasha finally lifts her head. She’s got a fat, split lip and a purple swelling bruise on her cheekbone, but most of the blood has come from the gash just above her hairline. “Weller and Jane are in the _hospital_ because of me,” she spits out. “I had a perfect _fucking_ shot and I blew it. Like a rookie!”

     “Look, Tasha,” Reade tries.

     “Don’t ‘look Tasha’ me,” she snaps, and then she winces. “Ow.”

     “Are you okay?” Reade asks. He shuffles a little closer on the bench and moves to put an arm over her shoulders, which Tasha pushes away.

     “I’m fine, stop trying to cuddle.”

     “You don’t look fine.” He pauses. “You should at least wash your face.”

     “Oh, shut up.”

     “I’m serious. It’s bright red. It looks horrible.”

     “You look horrible,” she retorts.

     Reade sighs and stands up, stretches his arms over his head. He feels Tasha’s eyes on him as he takes a couple of steps away from the bench and towards the row of washbasins. “Is there a cloth around here somewhere? Like, one of those face-washing cloths?”

     “I can wash my own damn face.”

     “No you can’t,” Reade says. “It’s super gross.”

     “Did you just say my _face_ is super gross?”

     “The blood all drying on your face,” Reade amends, but it’s too late. Tasha is shaking her head.

     “Oh no,” she says. “You can’t take that back, Reade. You think my face is gross.”

     “I found one,” he announces, lifting a washcloth and waving it in the air.

     “Where did you get that? Who does that even belong to? It’s purple. Is it Patterson’s? Reade, did you steal Patterson’s washcloth?”

     “No,” Reade says. He steps back towards the sinks, runs a faucet and puts the cloth into the water, dampening it. “Here.”

     Tasha takes the cloth with a sigh. “Whatever,” she says. She rubs it over her face. Muffled behind the fabric, she tells him, “I know what you’re doing, you know.”

     Trying to sound as innocent as possible, Reade says, “What? What am I doing?”

     “Distracting me. It’s dumb.” Tasha throws the washcloth back at him overarm.

     He catches it. “Is it working?”

     “No.”

     “Would it help if I called Weller?”

     She considers it, her head on one side. “Yes.”

     “Tasha-”

     “Stop that.”

     “Stop what?”

     “Trying to make me feel better.” Tasha rises from the bench and looks down at herself, wrinkling her nose. “There’s a lot of blood.”

     “The doctor said they’d be fine,” Reade says. “Tasha. They’ll be fine.”

     “He said Jane had a _good chance_. That’s not even in the ballpark of fine!”

     “Well,” Reade points out, “you don’t even like Jane.”

     “I don’t like a lot of people. I don’t like Cate Blanchett, or my aunt Cristina, or anyone who makes long and ridiculously complicated coffee orders, or half of the women you date.” Tasha rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t mean I want them lying on my lap and bleeding out all over me.”

     “What do you have against my girlfriends?”

     “Most of them are really creepy.”

     “They are not!” Reade says.

     “And,” she adds, “you always give me way too much information. _Way_.”

     “Because you ask! Why do you ask?!”

     Tasha says, “Call the hospital. I’m going to shower.”

     “Okay. You can come to mine after, if you like – to wait for news.”

     “I think I’m just gonna hang around here,” she tells him.

     Tasha’s hands go to the top buttons of her shirt and Reade turns away – because he’s polite, he tells himself, and he’s not going to make her uncomfortable. It’s not because he wants to look. He says, “I’m going to hang around here too, then.”

     “You’re so obvious.”

     Reade’s eyes stray to the mirror and he has to glance away fast. It’s not like it matters, he thinks. They’re both adults, and she clearly doesn’t care. She wouldn’t be changing with him in the room if she cared. Still, Reade has this feeling that if he looks even once, he won’t be able to pretend anymore. It won’t be ‘just friends’ anymore. Not in his head, anyway.

     “Am I your best friend?” he asks her.

     “Yeah.”

     “So I’m going to wait with you until we hear from the hospital. Okay?”

     “My clothes,” Tasha observes, “are a lost cause.”

     That’s as close as Reade’s going to get to agreement. Tasha is so emotional when it’s Reade in trouble; when he’s injured, or he’s the idiot who fucked up. When it’s her own problems, though, she clams up. It’s like pulling teeth trying to get anything out of her.

     “It wasn’t your fault,” he says anyway. “I don’t think I could have made that shot either.”

     “You could have.” Her voice is freezing cold, but the anger isn’t aimed at Reade.

     “I’m serious, Tasha. Don’t beat yourself up about this, okay? It’s not worth it and it wasn’t your fault. Weller’s gonna tell you the same thing.”

     “Go and call the hospital,” she says. “I’m trying to shower here.”

     Reade walks away, back through the maze of lockers and benches. He waits by the door until he hears the water switch on, and then he takes a few steps outside, blowing out a long breath as he reaches into his pocket for his phone.

     Right now, Reade feels inadequate. He always feels like this when there’s something wrong with Zapata. He can’t do anything to help her until she’s ready; and yet, after years of this, he knows the pattern. She’ll act as though he’s useless and annoying, but she’ll let him follow her back to her apartment tonight. They’ll sit on the sofa together and eat whatever takeout is left in the fridge, and maybe after a while Tasha will lean against him as they talk. She’ll turn her face up and fix him with those dark eyes and say, ‘thanks, Reade’, and it’ll be worth it.

     When they’d first started working together, Reade hadn’t been able to figure out that persistence was all it took. He’d given up when she lied and told him she was fine, or when she’d pushed him away or acted openly hostile.

     He wishes, now, that he’d learnt the pattern sooner. Learnt _Zapata_ sooner. Had that extra time with her. Although, really, extra time could only have exacerbated his current problem – which is that he has feelings for his partner. Stupid, goofy, strong-as-hell feelings that he can’t ever seem to crush down and he keeps forgetting to hide them. He’d told her, in the hospital. He’d kissed her not long afterwards. Both had been resounding failures.

     God, Reade thinks, he is just a complete mess. What an idiot. This is his _partner_ , not just some-

     He dials the hospital number and puts the phone up to his ear and stops thinking about Tasha.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly more angsty than I thought it would be, but hey, that's where this show is at right now.
> 
> I've been considering doing MORE Reade/Zapata fics, largely because there are just so few out there! If that's something that you've been looking for, be sure to let me know in the comments, because it'd be cool to know I'm catering to an audience of like-minded shippers.  
> Unfortunately Blindspot is so quick with all the plot twists that I don't have plans for anything multi-chapter or too plot-involved until there's some kind of break in the show, since it'd inevitably get buggered by canon. We'll see where things go!
> 
> Enjoy :)

Tasha says, “I brought you soup.”

     “I don’t think I need soup,” Reade tries, but his protests are feeble. Tasha pushes his waving hands out of the way and puts the soup in his lap.

     “Don’t spill it,” she warns. “It’s hot, and it’ll burn you.”

     “Can’t you put it on the table?”

     “Nope, because then you won’t eat it.” She settles in beside him, careful not to jostle Reade in any way. “Soup is good for you.”

     “I have a concussion, Zapata, it’s not a big deal.”

     “Too many concussions cause permanent brain damage,” Tasha reminds him. She takes a glance at Reade sideways; he’s not looking too miserable, so she ribs at him a little. “Not that it’d make any difference, in your case.”

     “You’re so rude,” Reade says, but he lifts the spoon with his bandaged hand and slurps soup into his mouth. His hand shakes. Soup sloshes, and the spoon drops back into the bowl. Reade looks down at the flecks of soup on his sweatpants and scowls. “Damnit.”

     “Did they stitch that up okay?” Tasha asks. She reaches for Reade’s hand and he lets her grab his fingers and pull them closer to her. She examines the bandages. No blood leaking through.

     “I just can’t move it so much,” Reade admits. “My fingers are all… kinda stiff.”

     “And they _checked_ for nerve damage, right?”

     He rolls his eyes. “I hope so.” Reade switches the spoon from his right hand to his left hand, folding his fingers around it clumsily. “I’m going to get soup all over this couch.”

     “Here,” Tasha says without thinking. She pulls the spoon away from him, and lifts the bowl, and somehow she’s spooning soup into Reade’s mouth and-

     Seriously, what the fuck is she doing? This is weird, right? It’s gotta be weird. He eats the spoonful, but their eyes catch on each other’s and hold. Suddenly the air between them is sexually charged, and that’s weird, because this is just _soup_ , and she’s feeding her partner _soup_ , it’s not supposed to feel like this-

     Tasha breaks eye contact, pulls back and sets bowl and spoon on the coffee table. “I think you should eat from the table,” she admits.

     Reade looks away from her and says, “Yeah, probably.”

     He actually does eat, after all that. Tasha watches, and waits, and worries about his stupid concussion and his stupid brain.

     She’d hated seeing him pass out. It always hurts more, somehow, when Reade is the one who’s injured. He’d taken a metal bar to the face and hadn’t even flinched, just fallen back. It had been Tasha who cried out and ran towards him. Training told her to go after the bad guy; to ensure he wasn’t a threat, to catch him, arrest him, whatever. Instinct drove her to her knees beside her partner.

     As bad as seeing him unconscious had been, watching him come to was worse. Reade’s eyelids had flickered and then opened and he’d stared at her with horror and nothing like recognition. Tasha had called his name and it had taken him a long moment to come back to himself. That disorientation had scared her the most.

     “Movie?” she suggests when he puts the spoon down in the empty soup bowl. “Wait. Are you thirsty? Soup is salty. Or do you need, like, cushions? Or an ice pack? Can you go to the bathroom by yourself?”

     “Jesus, Tasha, yes.”

     “Just checking.” Tasha smirks, and it pulls a smile out of Reade in response. There are bruises on his cheekbone and the side of his head, darker than the skin around them.

     “I seriously don’t need anything,” Reade tells her. “You don’t have to hover.”

     “Yeah, but I like to hover.”

     “You know you could actually go home, if you wanted to.”

     Tasha shakes her head firmly. “Uh-uh. No way. The doctor literally said to me, ‘someone needs to watch him.’ And then he said, ‘it should probably be you, Tasha Zapata.’”

     “He did not specifically recommend you,” Reade laughs, leaning back out along the couch and slinging his legs up onto the table.

     “No, he actually did. Anyway, you know I want to stay.”

     “I know.”

     There’s another long moment then, stretching out between them when their eyes meet. Tasha knows she’s being too damn open; feelings on her face right there for anyone to see, but she can’t help it around him. Her eyes trace his face and land again on the bruises. It makes her chest tight, seeing them.

     “Should have had your back,” Tasha whispers.

     Reade doesn’t take his eyes off hers. “You did,” he says.

     Damnit, how can he do that? His eyes are like fucking black holes, like he can look straight into her soul, or something. He’s too damn pretty, with his lips and his stupid, massive eyes and the ridiculous stubble that pisses Tasha off. It’s not fair, the way he looks. She hates that she can’t stop noticing.

     She thinks about bringing up the kiss, briefly, just to freak him out. Tasha could play it off as a joke easily enough, and it would make Reade drop his eyes from her face. He’d get embarrassed, and defensive, and deep down some part of her enjoys watching it. She knows he’s only so touchy about it because he meant it.

     Instead, Tasha turns her back to him and settles in along the couch. She’s close enough that she’s half-lying against Reade, and the arm he’s draped over the top of the couch rests above her shoulders. This way, though, Tasha doesn’t have to look at him. Looking at him reminds her how she feels.

     “Let’s watch something stupid,” she says. “Something with Vin Diesel in it.”

     “I know you only like those movies because everyone’s invincible,” Reade says. His arm curves off the edge of the couch and onto her shoulders, pulling her a little closer against his side. “You just like it when no one gets hurt.”

     “God, Reade, do you have to psychoanalyse me right now?” Tasha complains. “Sometimes a girl just appreciates unrealistically good driving, okay?”

     “You do like cars.”

     “I love cars.”

     “Actually,” Reade says, “could you grab me some more of those painkillers? They’re-”

     “On the bench, by the sink, I know,” Tasha interrupts, already standing. She walks into the kitchen and grabs the pills.

     When she turns, Reade is watching her with that look back on his face. She can see in his eyes everything he’s thinking; all the love that’s there, and it scares her to pieces. It’s dangerous, too, because it makes her want to tell him, to show him that she feels the same. There’s too much raw emotion scorching in the air and it’s making it hard for Tasha to even _breathe_ because she wants him so damn bad-

     She does the only thing she knows will make him close off. Sauntering back towards the couch, painkillers in one hand, water in the other, Tasha says, “Just don’t try anything when you’re all loopy and drugged up, okay?”

     Reade’s eyes shutter instantly. They go cold and dark and he says, “Of course not. Wouldn’t want to ruin this totally platonic couch-cuddling relationship we’ve got here.” He plays it off like a joke, but there’s a tense underlay to his words.

     Tasha’s chest gets tight in the same way it does when she sees the bruises, but she says, “Exactly,” and settles back in next to him. “Our friendship’s too good to lose.”


End file.
